


Gentle and Jagged

by Roca



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:20:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2797703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roca/pseuds/Roca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His heart. The world. Everything just stops.<br/>Why isn't she blinking; why isn't she calling his name?  Why isn't she breathing? Oh lord, oh lord, oh lord. Jenny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gentle and Jagged

                His heart. The world. Everything just stops.

                Why isn't she blinking; why isn't she calling his name?  Why isn't she breathing? Oh lord, oh lord, oh lord. _Jenny_.

                He knows that he is supposed to be doing something, but he struggles to grasp at the simplest of facts, because those eyes, dulled like glass, seem to have caused them to vanish like mist in the sunlight.

                It is the faltering thump of his own heart that makes him remember. Pulse. He needs to find it, but where could it have hidden, anyway?

                He stumbles forward like a drunkard, even though the untouched champagne is dripping down the stairs behind him. Catching himself – should he have caught her? – he runs toward the bed, because he doesn’t want to be later than he already is.

                He makes himself focus, even though his thoughts are chaotically flying apart; tries desperately to figure out where to put his hands, where to feel for the steady _pound pound_ of life beneath his fingertips. But it’s not working, it’s not right – there’s something in the way, and it’s all so still.

                Oh God, is that her neck? It’s not supposed to be like that. That’s all that he can think, stupidly, slowly. It’s not –

                Why is she so cold?

                Somehow, he finds that he has moved his hands away from her throat and is gathering her into his arms. He’s clutching at her, holding her tight, protecting her from evils that can never hurt her again.

                But they’ve just begun tormenting him.

                He makes certain he’s gentle. Cradling her like an infant. A life just begun, not the other way around. She’s as limp as a ragdoll, but heavier than he would have expected – and what had he expected, coming up those stairs with excitement and elation winding together in his heart? Not this. Anything but this.

                He becomes distantly aware of a keening wail that seems to be filling his loft, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s him, that he’s baying like a wounded animal and cannot stop himself. But even when they fade to mere whimpers, he still feels no release.

                He never thought of her as fragile, not his Jenny – she was loud and bright and fierce, and he loved her for it. Electric, a strike of lightning – but even storms can be felled, he sees.

                And he knows who has done it.

                The raw pain fades into something even more primal. Hatred. He can feel it thickening his veins with fire, and begins to understand monstrosity that has taken place.

                The sharp, impossible angle at which her neck is bent. The scent of roses, tinted with the deeper scent of death. The warbling of the opera on his stereo. The fear, frozen like dark amber, still in her gaze.

                But then the anger is gone, replaced by a deep sense of loss that tears a chasm in him as he carefully brushes a hand over he unseeing eyes to close them. He buries his face in her hair and breathes in the sweet smell of her, the one that can even block out the wretched flowers. But he can still smell death – ever-persistent, tirelessly waiting to claim and conquer.

                The shock begins to set in again, and it whitewashes all of his other jaggedly plummeting emotions, leaving him blank and empty. But the fury will return. He can feel it roiling just beneath the stark oblivion, singing for blood.

                But now is not the time.

He lays her down softly on the bed and brushes the hair out of her face. Hesitantly, he shifts her head so that it lies on his pillow.

                There. She could be sleeping.

                But even in the depths of despair, Rupert Giles cannot tell himself such lies.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This moment just got to me a LOT, and I've always loved the different ways people have described Giles falling apart afterward. Maybe I'm just sadistic?


End file.
